Welcome to the corporate-owned Congress:
Amid losses, some ways for House Democrats to gain
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
For the past four years Barney Frank has been chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. In that role he helped usher one of the most expansive financial regulation reforms in history to the president's desk, and in doing so, paved the way for the Consumer Financial Protection Agency that Elizabeth Warren now heads.
For the next two years, the Financial Services Committee will be run not by Frank, but by Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), who has taken tens of thousands of dollars from big banks and who, not surprisingly, voted to oppose the Dodd-Frank reform bill. He has already promised to water down that legislation and has supported doing so by way of government shutdown. "We are going to have to be brave this time," he said on the Fox Business Network.
For the past two years Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has been chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He used that power to pass a health-care reform bill (with a robust public option) as well as the only serious piece of climate legislation ever contemplated - and voted on - by the entire House chamber.
But for the next two years, he will be the ranking Democratic member of his committee, likely to be replaced as chairman by Joe Barton (R-Tex.). That's the same Joe Barton who gained notoriety earlier this year for apologizing to BP after the United States thoughtlessly spilled ocean all over the company's oil. Barton, it turns out, has taken more money from the oil industry than any other sitting member of Congress, including $22,800 from BP itself.
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It was Chairman Sander Levin (D-Mich.) of the House Ways and Means Committee who helped pass legislation closing tax loopholes for multinational corporations. It will now be Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) - who has taken hundreds of thousands from those same multinationals - who will work to reopen them.
What happened on Election Day won't just result in the corporate-sponsored speakership of Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio). It will also create a new class of right-wing committee chairmen in the House - Republican members who will wield and use substantial power. |
